alternative music – definitely dark

i got an unexpected treat this week in the form of an invitation to perform live, from none other than DJ Dolston: the promoter, manager and madness behind Death Disco. i wasn’t able to accept, but was pleased to see him leave the door open for us anyway. a nice, well-timed boost. much <3, DJD.

truthfully, the thought of performing live never occurred before. this project began as a studio experiment with a goal of getting a few fans (achieved!), some club play (achieved!) and some digital sales (not achieved!). for now, i can’t see beyond that. plus, there’s the fact that this “band” is / was / probably always will be one guy and a load of hardware and software (marcus, my drummer, runs on hydrogen, if you must know).

i’m not sure what “live” is, given the model i work from. sadly, and at least for now, video is as close to motion entertainment as asw gets.

however, with the purchase of a new guitar this summer and a new laptop this week to replace the 7 year old one [yes, seven, not a typo] that the existing material was mixed on, the pieces are in place to make some more music. now, as always, the missing ingredient is time.

sometime this week i hope to transfer the catalogue of raw songs, mixes and masters to the new hardware, and work on completing a 99%-done “fun song” comprised of a cool, heavily modulated loop and some of my favourite sound bites. I think it could use some guitar noise to bring it to the finish line. 🙂

and no, i’m not promising a release date. that joke isn’t funny anymore.

p.s. a helmet tip to Bubby-Bobble for being our latest fan on last.fm.

tonight while i was shoveling the snow from my driveway, i had plenty of time to consider how completely vile and reprehensible fred phelps is. and the rest of his freakish family. except nathan, of course, and any others who had the good sense to quit or be shunned for coming to their senses…

anyway, i wrote most of the lyrics of a rather puerile, country-flavored anti-hymn in fp’s (dis-) honor.

maybe i can punk it up a little. it’s a good candidate for one of those one-off, throw away tracks you hide at the end of a cd (remember those?) after 12 minutes of silence.

but mostly, i just think it would be cathartic to record.

a worthless fucking song for a worthless fucking bastard. why the fuck not?

…nothing special. in fact, that was the whole idea. cheap, bottom of the line, mass-produced, official copy of a good instrument. something that can sit on a stand, and withstand being scratched, knocked over, neglected.

it makes sound and will hopefully stay in tune for the duration of recording.

i bought it from lamusic dot ca, and so far i don’t recommend them. they are not fast. i could have flown to indonesia and bought one in person by now, plus had a week’s holiday.

i still want to put out music. i just realized that despite all the shit that’s happened, i feel mostly okay… and that’s detrimental to my creative impetus.

i’m most into expression when i hurt so bad i need to let it all out. as it stands, i’m keeping the good stuff in. recording the material i have on paper and in the cloud will take work, because the person that wrote it isn’t the same anymore. his non-evil twin has to pick up the undone.

anyway… i now own (but have not received!) something that i can see everytime i walk past it. i want to make it more likely that i’ll grab it and start writing each day, if only for 10 minutes.

what a year its been, marked with personal tragedies and personal transformation. i’m a better man for it, certainly, but with no musical output to show for it. still, there’s lots of fodder to feed lyrics, should i need to write any. the only real limiter is the one that stopped production last june: lack of time.

an lp release is, realistically, too large to promise anymore. i’d like to push / pull / drag an ep release by the fall though. no promises. just know that i want it more than you do.

so… not a lot of work on the project recently. two of my family members were diagnosed with cancer within a week of each other. then, if that wasn’t enough, my pet dies. more than that, it was suffering greatly and i had to make the hard choice to have it euthanized.

lots of dark feelings for album material, if i could just drag my ass back to the microphone. sadly, there are more people than just me coping with the turmoil, and i’m needed still.

funny, but when i said we’d have the album out by the end of the year i truly thought that was more than enough time. now it seems like it might be barely enough.

anyway… that’s what’s up. many thanks to apriorism for keeping his ears and eyes open for us. it’s good to be missed.

haven’t received any feedback on this EP title yet, but i’m certain that people are wondering.

the title is intentionally designed to convey multiple meanings, and evoke a reaction from the listener based on individual perception. so, regardless of what you think it’s about, you’re probably right. three very intentional themes are:

humour / flippancy: you can easily write the title off as stupid or funny, and the title is intended to be a comment on dark artists’ tendency to take themselves and their genre too seriously.

duality: as a species we tend to be very absolute in our perceptions, but things that appear wholesome or harmless are usually not. if you’ve been bitten (either in a literal or figurative sense) by someone or something you loved, you’ve experienced this.

innocence damaged: everyone began life in the same way. how is it that some of us grow into monsters? when i thought about summing up a bad childhood in a sentence, this popped into my head: a strange intermixture of stereotypically warm and comforting imagery, warped by emotional turmoil and upheaval.

we’re really endeavouring to have a point to everything we do, within limits (because even that would be a constraint). that said, we’ve amassed a huge list of joke song and album titles, but we won’t pretend they’re deep and meaningful should any of them see the light of day.

since releasing “birth (the end)” as a ‘non-single’ (no hoopla, no video), i’ve wondered how to explain it. in series with the rest of the album tracks, i think its purpose is clear. as a stand-alone composition, it loses that context.

but in this era where albums in their entirety have been largely supplanted by the shuffle mentality, sequential experience isn’t really a realistic expectation.

so there is it is: “birth” is meant to be evocative, not entertaining. it sets the mood for what comes after. the closing track for the forthcoming album, “death (the beginning)”, will be similarly constructed, and will conclude what comes before. neither track will have a place on anyone’s mixtape or iPod, but they’ re essential bookends on ‘rage, hate, and fluffly bunnies’.

still debating whether RH&FB will be 5 or 6 long. much depends on how happy we are with “daffodils in springtime” (which at this rate might be the last song produced).

just mastered another track. it’s the opener of the EP, and not intended for release as a single.

it says what we wanted to say, but even as the writers, it’s hard to listen to…

the cycles of the music reflect the cyclical recurrence of abuse. mid-song, the woman’s pleas to ‘stop’ seem to blend from a conflict with her partner to her distress during the process of birth labour, but it also indicates that the abuse continues to underscore the relationship, even as it changes from a pair to a family.

sonically, it’s pounding and grating. the words are only partially intelligible: more emotional than understandable. a relationship in turmoil, domestic abuse, an unwanted pregnancy: the stage for a new life that never should have been.

as an album cut, it’s part of the story. it’s the conceptual framework for the pieces that follow. it’s the beginning of a story arc. while RH&FB wasn’t initially conceived as a ‘concept EP’, the lyrical output clustered around the same dark region, and a concept emerged.

that said, people may only ever listen to the opening track once. hopefully it’s not the first song they ever hear from us, or they may not bother to listen to another one.